Intelligent lighting system for plant growth and development

A smart illumination system (ILSys) to study the growth process of green plants was developed. This system can control commercial LED lamps that can be turned on to emit continuous or pulsed light. ILSys was applied to determine the effect of pulsed light on the fluorescence emission in tomato plants (Lycopersicon esculentum). The fluorescence emission was measured when the plants were radiated with continuous light and light pulsed at different frequencies (0.1 Hz, 1 Hz, 10 Hz, 50 Hz, 100 Hz, 500 Hz, 1 kHz, 5 kHz, 10 kHz, 50 kHz and 100 kHz). For the experiment three red and blue-LEDs lamps and a Pulse Modulated Chlorophyll Fluorescence Monitoring System were connected to the ILSys. Results showed the highest quantum efficiencies in the Photosystem II (φPSII) was obtained when applying pulse frequency of 0.1 Hz and 1 Hz with 50% light pulse width. ILSys allowed the finding of a significant difference in the response of the quantum efficiency in the Photosystem II between pulsed light at a number of frequencies and continuous light.

► A LED-based intelligent lighting system for plant growth is proposed.
► We examine changes in the chlorophyll fluorescence in different pulsed light treatments.
► The quantum efficiency of PSII decreases when frequency of the light pulses increases.